The cultural and creative ecosystem of Puerto de la Cruz
1. Puerto de la Cruz and culture
Puerto de la Cruz is a municipality located in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. The municipality has an area of less than 9 km2, is home to 32,000 residents, and is the economic driver for a region of 130,000 inhabitants that is mainly supported by the tourism industry, welcoming 800,000 visitors annually. This puts significant pressure on the small region when the number of people in the area swells to 70,000.
With its agricultural and fishing roots, surrounded by a beautiful natural landscape, Puerto de la Cruz has always been a place that has attracted visitors. It was a pioneer international tourism destination in the 60s and 70s, which brought mass tourism, urban development, and gentrification to a delicate area.
In more recent years, its management of culture has highlighted the city’s need for a new perspective, and has been working on developing a new approach.
The ECC is a strategic management model focused on reframing the territory as a place rich in identity, cohesion, and well-being.
2. Project goals and implementation
2.1. Main goal and specific objectives
The Cultural and Creative Ecosystem (ECC) of Puerto de la Cruz is a strategic management model for a creating a participatory cultural backbone, focused on social and economic development, as well as reframing the territory and city as a place rich in identity, cohesion, and well-being. This model seeks to enhance the value of the cultural sector and the creative industry from a contemporary perspective, lending weight to sustainable development policies and cross-cutting approaches.
The objective is to build human and social development, such as knowledge-building, social construction, identity building; economic development, such as the creative industry or tourism industry; and to position culture as creative, inclusive, egalitarian, enriching, and respectful vehicle for local identities. In order for this to be successful, the process is based on three core ideas: creative culture, collective intelligence, and dialogue between culture and visitors.
This approach demonstrates that Puerto de la Cruz is committed to creating physical and virtual environments focused on connecting people and organizations that generate value, identity, and sustainable development. This process of participatory community building is made reality through concrete actions that value the cultural sector in a more social way.
2.2. Project development
The project was developed by the Department of Culture of the Puerto de la Cruz City Council, with the citizens of the municipality as participants and beneficiaries. Building the ECC program has led to involvement and cooperation from entities and groups that have shown significant interest in the project. Among the many participatory activities carried out, a UCLG 7 Key Factors Workshop was organized to gather information on the commitment of local actors and to define cultural actions to localize the SDGs.
The strategic management model of the Cultural and Creative Ecosystem (ECC) of Puerto de la Cruz is developed along three pillars:
- Guiding Pillar: incorporating a strategic aspect related to policy development, which enables real action and control over the project. The JOSITY project is particularly noteworthy within this approach, a Culture andVisitor Innovation Laboratory that joins the strategy and the work of institutions committed to the ECC, such as Tourism Tenerife through its Innovation and Talent Area, the Canary Islands Institute for Cultural Development, the ULL-FECAM Chair of Cultural Policies).
- Platform Pillar:
- Physical platforms: This section aims to boost cultural activity throughout the value chain in physical spaces; improving participation, implementing projects, creating new audiences, and more. To this end, five lines of action were established: New Narratives on contemporary themes and media; Festivals and regular annual events; Audiovisual development; Social design and civic innovation in design as a tool for the common good and the development of citizenship; and Cultural infrastructure.
- Digital Platform: This part refers to digital spaces whose function is to facilitate and expand access to cultural events. It is viewed as a toolbox to support the live events, and thereby serves to meet the needs of creation, access, and participation.
- Communication Pillar: This area defines the activity around content dissemination and ECC Promotion, which is also viewed as a means of facilitating access to culture and promoting connections among talent.
Puerto de la Cruz is committed to creating physical and virtual environments focused on connecting people and organizations that generate value, identity, and sustainable development.
3. Impacts
3.1. Direct impacts
The Cultural and Creative Ecosystem (ECC) of Puerto de la Cruz has a budget of €3,200,000 over four years (€800,000 per year) provided by the three public administrations involved in its financing (City Council, Cabildo, and the Government of the Canary Islands). The cultural projects are based on social participation, dialogue between citizens and visitors, and a connection to the cultural fabric with other sectors, as well as cultural cross-cutting initiatives based on sustainable development and the SDGs.
3.2. Assessment
The evaluation was carried out in two ways:
- Internal and ongoing: once the objectives had been established in each program, indicators were provided for monitoring.
- External and specific: periodically an external evaluation service was contracted to provide its methodology and vision of the processes.
3.3. Key factors
Above all, the success of this cultural policy is supported by the concept of “Culture, Expanded”, in which apart from the artistic element, culture is understood to go beyond and embrace humanistic, scientific, and technological knowledge; citizen participation through work platforms as a practice for co-creation and co-management with citizens; and the theoretical anchors that have given the ECC a consistent, underlying perspective, from the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, as well as the New European Bauhaus perspective.
The objective is to build human, social, and economic development through a creative, inclusive, egalitarian, enriching, and respectful vehicle for local identities.
3.4. Continuity
The design and development of the ECC program was established within a community and its structure does not depend solely or exclusively on a public or private organization, nor on partisan interests. The local government participates decisively in reinforcing the design, as well as in generating processes and tools that make the ecosystem even more sustainable.
4. Further information
Puerto de la Cruz was a candidate for the fifth UCLG Mexico City – Culture 21 International Award (February - June 2022). The jury for the award drew up its final report in September of 2022, and requested that the UCLG Committee on Culture promote this project as one of the good practices implemented under Agenda 21 for culture.
This report was written by Marcelino Martín Encinoso, Director of Culture, Department of Culture, Puerto de la Cruz City Council, Puerto de la Cruz, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.
Contact: mamartin (at) puertodelacruz.es
Website: www.puertodelacruz.es
